


And they stare

by Phtho_nos



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Body Horror, Descent into Madness, Eyes, Gen, I guess this is dark idk????, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Insanity, Insomnia, Loss of Identity, Madness, Mementos, Self-Harm, Self-Mutilation, T H E E Y E S, Vomiting, basically it’s akiras slow descent into madness, i guessss againnn, kind of????, oooo that’s another tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-26 19:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20032420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phtho_nos/pseuds/Phtho_nos
Summary: Mementos can take a toll on one’s mind. It can induce sleepless nights and loss of appetite. It can stop you from living. From existing. From wanting to exist.





	And they stare

They were following him, those damned eyes. He couldn’t get a nights rest on a good day, never mind a bad one.

They followed him to and from school, in the reflections from the train’s glass windows and from the coffee Sojiro-san served him each morning.

It wasn’t paranoia, as persistently as Takemi insisted it was. He could practically feel them boring into the back of his head, as well as the whispers too. 

His brain wasn’t fucking with him, he knew that. Brains don’t fuck, although quite amusing when entertaining the concept of it, and his was just like every other dull old human’s.

The only difference with his, it seemed, was that he could see and hear things others didn’t. He wasn’t crazy, and he wasn’t going to go into all 724 reasons as to why he wasn’t either. 

Instead, he opted for sleeping pills and painkillers for when the whispers got too loud and the eyes stressed him too much. His hate for eyes only seemed to grow when he had first started seeing them.

Often, he would avoid even looking at himself in the mirror out of fear that the eyes staring back would not be his own, and he didn’t even bother with looking directly at who was talking to him. 

He would snatch any and every opportunity to stay in that dusty little attic that he dubbed “home”, much preferring the darkness to the prying eyes and the noises. 

The windows were boarded up with scraps of wood he’d collected from the metaverse, which was the only pro out of even going there in his view.

The eyes were worse down there in Mementos, with the veiny walls and pulsing sounds, as if they were inside some beast, travelling further into its stomach. 

He almost cried for pure joy when Makoto joined the team and assumed the mantle of leader he once bore, much to the chagrin of Ryuji (who still held much suspicion about her). 

Morgana would spend most days away from him, outside and about (most likely with Ann, he thought). That was fine, less eyes and less noise was equal to his ideal environment. 

The cafe downstairs was generally quiet and often barren so he held no qualms with occasionally helping out down there, as long as it wasn’t rush hour (that was when the voices were less like whispers and more like shouts, and the eyes were harsher and scarier).

At school he kept his head down and just worked, he didn’t want to see any more eyes, and it didn’t help that there were so many windows in the school. 

He would see Takemi at least once every two days, to simply chat or to get some work done, and he liked it there because there weren’t many windows where the eyes could see him through, and the beeping of machinery overpowered the indistinct chatter of the voices. 

Sometimes he would tell her about what the voices say and how harsh the eyes were that day, and when he did she simply listened and nodded along like she knew exactly what he was on about despite not having the faintest of clues.

He respected her and was lucky enough to have earned her respect in return, a simple exchange. 

Sometimes, just sometimes, he would look into Takemi’s eyes during one of their many chats; he would always be surprised at the fact that her eyes were strictly hers and no one else’s, that when he would look into them, it would be her through and through and no one else.

He stopped looking after a while though (he was starting to see her eyes in the glass and it made him scared because if they were there then that meant she hated him because why else would they keep him up at night if she didn’t hate him?).

His meet-ups with Takemi, over time, gradually fell out of sync, and he found himself only visiting every week or so. She seemed distressed that he wasn’t coming as often, but her eyes were too much. 

He started to hear her voice among the whispers, and that was when he completely cut off any form of contact with her. 

It wasn’t paranoia, he knew it wasn’t; but without Takemi there to assure him that it was, he grew unsure.

-/-/-/-

It was a while later, after Kaneshiro’s palace and after Futaba’s as well, that the eyes stopped only being seen in the reflections. Sometimes they could be found in clumps in corners or on people, only watching him (only ever watching him).

They would form in clumps of red and flesh and liquids best meant to be kept inside the human body. 

He didn’t eat much anymore, he often threw up what was given to him anyway. He hardly went outside other than to go to school, and a short nap was a good night’s sleep for him. 

He was starting to feel Sojiro-san’s gaze on him more, he felt his eyes and his voice and his thoughts and sometimes it all became so much that he had to lock himself in the bathroom. 

Sojiro-san was clearly disappointed in him, clearly angry, clearly disgusted. He just knew it.

He wasn’t worried because he’d become skinnier these past few months, nor concerned about the dark bags under his eyes and the bloody cuts on his arms. No, that simply couldn’t be it. 

He no longer helped out in the cafe, he didn’t speak with Sojiro-san either. He didn’t look and didn’t stay more than he could handle. He stayed upstairs or in the toilet, where he would empty his stomach and when there was nothing in there to begin with, play with his knives on his skin. The mirror was shattered and Sojiro-san either hadn’t noticed or couldn’t be bothered to put up a new one. There weren’t any eyes in there.

He didn’t hang out with his “friends”, his fellow Phantom Thieves. He barely saw them other than when they would venture into mementos together. He didn’t help them with the bigger targets because they had to go outside for too long and that scared him because new places meant new eyes and thoughts and voices. 

He was clearly the strongest on the team, and could probably clear out a palace on his own if he so pleased; he, however, found it useless to go into the metaverse unless he gained some pro out of it, and the only pros he ever got came from going into mementos, which was the only thing he did with the Phantom Thieves (they were fodder to him, a bargaining chip and useless deadweight, so if he needed he could sacrifice them without a second thought, that was the only reason he went with them).

Morgana stopped living with him, and he didn’t care. He didn’t know who he was staying with now but it was none of his concern. Less eyes, less unneeded ramblings, less waste of space. 

-/-/-/-

He spoke to no one. Takemi hadn’t seen him in over 4 months. He didn’t bother to give her even a thought.

He no longer went to school, only ever to mementos, where the eyes seemed normal and the whispers seemed as though they fit in there.

No light could stream in through the windows of his attic room, and the only thing that remained there was his bed, pushed haphazardly into the middle of the room, away from the walls. Junk he’d collected from mementos could be found under his bed, but there was no decoration to his room. It was barren save for his bed and himself.

There were monsters in the corners and eyes and nightmares and he wanted to die already he wanted to die die die diediediediedie. 

He breathed in deep (though he couldn’t hear it over the voices, the screeching and wailing and arguing).

He shivered under the eyes’ scrutinising gazes, dread coursing through his veins and pure adrenalin powering his brain. 

His arms looked like they were shredded by some monster (which he thought wasn’t all that far from the truth), they were red with blood and vomit and infection. He simply gazed. 

He simply gazed.

He simply gazed.

He simply gazed.

He breathed out.

He breathed no more.

**Author's Note:**

> ewe I haven’t posted for a while so have this that has been sitting in my notes for about a month which I finally finished just a few minutes ago. 
> 
> I found mementos really creepy as I progressed through it and I thought of how that progression could take a toll on your own state of mind. 
> 
> (Also why did they have to make the final part of mementos not creepy at all. Likeee???? Why???? I wasn’t scared anymore it looked like a chill place wtf???)


End file.
